


Operation Broken Eagle

by machina



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Blindfolds, Breakfast, Dark fic, Dubious Consent, Emotional Manipulation, Hand Jobs, Lies, M/M, Masochism, Oral Sex, Pain, References to PTSD, Rooftop Sex, Rough Sex, Scars, Steve Has Issues, Tony Has Issues, gagging, references to alcoholism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-27
Updated: 2014-08-27
Packaged: 2018-02-15 00:59:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 13,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2209653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/machina/pseuds/machina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Captain America is virtuous, perfect, and pure. To Tony, he’s an intriguing and irresistible challenge. He makes it his mission to break Steve Rogers down, to lay bare the ugly human core of the modern myth; to possess him, use him, and throw him away like he does with everyone else.</p><p>Things don’t go according to plan.</p><p>(Combined fill for two dub-con kinkmeme prompts: <a href="http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/18886.html?thread=43659718#t43659718">#1</a>, <a href="http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/18886.html?thread=43706822#t43706822">#2</a>.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It started on the helicarrier. _Everything special about you came out of a bottle._

Steve didn't miss a beat then. The bigger man, the all-American hero, striking back with a confident challenge. _Put on the suit. Let's go a few rounds._

Tony could tell, though. Could tell he'd hurt Steve, deep and ragged where it counted, where the serum couldn't reach. And he knew, too, that Steve wanted to hurt him back.

_Let's go a few rounds._

He doesn't know why or how it first arose, that desire to find the weak points in the legendary Captain America's armor, to chip away at them, little by little, until Steve crumbles to shards, red, white, blue, and quivering all over. To make Steve his and his alone.

Tony can have any man or any woman he wants, can have as many as he wants in any combination imaginable, but other people...they're boring. Fawning, eager, falling all over themselves to please him, or maybe just to grab a fistful of his fortune. Other people don't have the divine glow that Steve Rogers has. No flawless manners, no incorruptible morals, no loose threads to pull, and pull, and pull, until they unravel completely and sob and beg to be held, and then turn around and put a fist in Tony's face.


	2. Chapter 2

"Hit me."

"Stark..."

"I said _hit me._ "

Steve lifts one wrapped hand to wipe the sweat from his forehead. His knuckles are red from heavy bag work, and he lost count of his sets a while ago. Then Stark strides into the gym, _Steve's_ gym, does a few minutes of what seems to be an attempt at shadowboxing, and now he wants to face Steve in the ring?

He doesn't have his suit. He isn't even wearing gloves.

"What's the matter?" Tony goads. "Scared?"

"Scared I'll hurt you," Steve answers. "What're you doing here, anyway? You have your own gym. I mean, gyms. Up in that tower of yours."

Tony gestures around at the bare brick walls, the unfinished floor covered in worn equipment and other peoples' sweat, the loud, cheap lights, the absence of air conditioning in the July heat. "Thought I'd slum it today."

"This place is _not_ a slum," says Steve defiantly. He knows it isn't fancy and modern, it doesn't have treadmills with TVs and wall-to-wall mirrors, but frankly he finds that stuff distracting and more importantly—

"Feels like home to you, right?" Tony plucks the words from Steve's train of thought, easy as a bandit in the night. He steps right up close to Steve and points a finger at his chest. "You know it isn't, though."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Steve deflects politely, taking a drink of water and bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet, fists up, eyes on the bag, ready for another set.

"Yeah, you do," Tony presses. "Look at this dump. Take away that digital clock on the wall—which is ten minutes slow, by the way—and you'd think we were back in 1942. But a shitty gym in a shitty building is no time machine, Rogers."

"What exactly are you trying to say?" Steve frowns. He's starting to visualize Stark's face on the heavy bag now. They saved Manhattan together and they're a team now, he knows that, but he still thinks Stark talks too much and sometimes he just wants to plant a roundhouse kick right in the center of that smirking, bearded mug.

Steve lets his arms drop to his sides and shakes out the tension. People like Stark didn't exist back home, or if they did, they were a lot less annoying. Everyone he knew, everyone he'd left behind, they were all good people. Erskine. Peggy. _Bucky._ It was dumb, but sometimes Steve still thought if he closed his eyes and hoped enough, that somehow this modern world would melt away, fluorescent lights fading to warm yellow, and he'd be able to go back—

"I'm trying to say you can't go home anymore," says Tony.

That's it. Something in Steve snaps then, and he forgets all about his strength, all about Stark's lack of armor and training and his pure, flimsy, serum-less humanity, and before he knows it he's delivered a swift left hook square to Stark's flapping jaw.

There's an audible _crack_. Stark is knocked to the floor.

Steve stumbles back, horrified. _I just hit a guy weaker than me. A guy who couldn't defend himself. And I hit him hard._

Stark makes a funny sound. Laughter? It can't be. He spits up a mouthful of blood. It spatters on the mat. "When I said 'hit me'," he slurs, "I didn't mean like that." He holds up his bare hands. "Didn't even have my gloves on yet. You taking lessons from the Jolly Green Giant, Rogers? Punch first, ask questions later? Doesn't look very heroic from where I'm standing. You're a super soldier, I'm just a squishy human...with a disability." He points at his arc reactor. "Big guy picking on a little guy, it's almost like you're—" he bares his teeth, his bloodstained teeth— "a bully."

Steve's heart is pounding in his chest, and it's not because of the workout. His vision is going all fuzzy. He's...dizzy? What is this? He has the serum, this hasn't happened since the serum, this isn't supposed to happen.

He stares at Tony for a second, then turns around and runs. Out of the ring, out the door, out into the street, wrapped knuckles and bare feet and soaking T-shirt and sweatpants and all, out into the new world, but also—in his deepest dreams—as far away from it as he can.


	3. Chapter 3

Tony smiles to himself as he looks down at the puddle on the floor, blood and spit, glistening, congealing. He and Steve could hurt each other so, so well.

He isn't incorruptible, this hero from his father's constant comparisons and far less frequent bedtime stories. He's human after all—a fuck-up, just like everyone else. And if Captain America can be a fuck-up, maybe there's hope for all the other fuck-ups in the world. Maybe even the ones as far gone as Tony is.


	4. Chapter 4

Steve avoids Tony and his tower now, and it's hard to get under his skin when he isn't around, but Tony has ways of keeping tabs on his quarry. JARVIS collates the paparazzi's dross for his daily edification, and Agents Romanoff and Barton—though they'd murder you if you ever said so—are a pair of incurable gossips.

The hero out of time has been trying his luck with a few modern girls. Adjusting, trying to move on with his life.

The first one, the diner waitress, she sold everything to the magazines for hundreds of thousands of dollars. _CAPTAIN AMERICA STILL FROZEN "DOWN THERE",_ the headlines scream, with a helpful yellow arrow stuck onto a blurry smartphone photograph. _STEVE ROGERS BELONGS IN "MAD MEN", CLAIMS GIRLFRIEND._

The other dates seem to have kept their stories to themselves, but Tony has heard a good handful of rumors. He dumped her because "I'm sorry, ma'am, but I just don't think I'm right for you", or she dumped him, always to the same tune: old-fashioned. Frigid. Boring. Terrible in bed.

It's sheer dumb luck that gets the Avengers assembled and suited up at SHIELD headquarters a few days later to deal with an IED and a terrorist cell. It turns out to be just a bunch of drunk exchange students and an old TV that someone dumped on the street. While Nick Fury hares off to personally choke the life out of the poor SHIELD grunt who passed the bad intel up the chain of command, Tony sidles up to Steve as the other Avengers mill aimlessly around the briefing room.

"I hear you've been striking out lately," he probes.

"You people are obsessed with sex," Steve mutters. He isn't trying to deflect Tony's jabs or pretend he doesn't know what he means or shut him down the way he usually does, and it catches Tony a little off guard. "What happened to romance? And getting to know someone? Why does everything nowadays have to be about who's in whose bed?"

"Because sex is _fun_ ," Tony insists. "Look around you. We're all getting some. Romanoff and Barton are at it like rabbits every second we're not looking. There's Thor and Dr. Foster, and Bruce has that on-again, off-again thing with Betty or Betsy or whatever her name is, and I bet even Fury's getting more action than you are."

"You missed someone," Steve sniffs.

"Me?" Says Tony with a shrug. "Figured it went without saying. I get someone new into my bed every night, and it's _awesome_."

It's a lie. He hasn't fucked anyone in weeks. He's tired of fucking other people and pretending they're Steve.

Other people cry too easily.

Steve scrunches up his face in distaste, but then admits, "if I could have it that way and feel alright with it, I would. Just this once."

"Oh," Tony hums. "Captain America's got a case of red, white, and blue balls, does he?"

"Knock it off, Stark," Steve warns, with narrowed eyes. "I don't know why I'm even talking to you about this."

Just then, Agent Hill pokes her head in the door and tells the Avengers they're dismissed. Thor has already left to go pick a fight with a vending machine anyway, and Bruce is on his way out as she enters. Steve thanks her and excuses himself, intolerably polite, and strides off.

Tony isn't letting him go just like that, not when he's so close. A few more taps of the chisel and there'll be a whole new web of cracks in that vibranium shield. He hurries after Steve, corners him in the corridor.

"I can fix you," Tony murmurs.

"I'm not broken," Steve spits, too quickly. Tony knows he has him now.

"Please," says Tony, staring up into Captain America's cowl with wide, dark eyes. "Let me."

" _You?_ Personally? Not in a million years. Not for a million dollars." Steve's whole body is wound up, ready to bolt.

"Of course not me," Tony backpedals. "Someone else, someone I know. She's nice," he says, choosing his words carefully, "patient. You'll like her. Let her take care of your little problem, no strings attached, then you'll be ready to put yourself out there and find a lady you can romance or whatever." Tony has no intention of letting Steve do any such thing, but he won't mention that right now.

Steve eyes him warily. "...Miss Potts?"

"No! Nononono. You haven't met her, but I promise, she'll give you what you like."

"Why are you doing this?" Steve asks quietly.

Tony knows the magic words here. "Because we're a team, and I want to help you." He lowers his voice. "And if I don't, who else will?"

Steve makes a little noise that sounds like something delicate breaking. Tony knows Steve knows it's true. His friends and family are long dead, the rest of the team doesn't pry into his private life, SHIELD is only concerned about keeping him on their leash, and everyone else just wants a piece of the Captain America myth.

He finally nods, the imprints of wings on his cowl bobbing up and down, and all Tony can see now is those feathers—his star-spangled bird in a cage.


	5. Chapter 5

He's alone. Tony has assured him there are no cameras in this area of the tower. The sheets are soft, the lights are dim, the walls are soundproof, and all Steve can think is, _what have I got myself into?_ Has he really just allowed Tony Stark to set him up on a—what even is this, a date? A, what's it called, a 'one-night stand' or a 'booty call'? Or has Tony bought him a prostitute?

Steve shivers at that last thought. He's not the kind of man who pays for sex, he respects women too much for that. _But does Tony?_ He runs his fingers through his hair. _Why did I ever agree to this?_

The door opens and in walks a girl in a short silk robe, dark-eyed, with brown curls falling gently at her shoulders.

Oh god, she looks just like Peggy.

Immediately, he stands up off the bed to greet her. She speaks first, in a rich English accent. "Steve Rogers, I assume."

She _sounds_ just like Peggy.

He can't. He just can't. He collapses back into the bed and no sound emerges from his mouth. He feels the mattress dip as she sits beside him, feels a soft hand on his chin as she turns his head towards her. "I'm Theresa," she says. "Tony and I are...we've known each other for a long time. He's told me what you need, but I'd rather hear it from you."

Steve should leave. He should apologize to Theresa for wasting her time, he should go track down Tony goddamn Stark and shake him and demand to know what he thinks he's playing at, but. But. All those other women from the last few months, all the trying and failing and the disappointed looks, the half-hearted grinding and moaning. Maybe this _is_ what he needs. Just this once.

Cautiously, Steve puts his hands on her arms. "No strings attached," he whispers, echoing Tony's words.

Theresa closes her eyes, looking almost sagely, and nods. He lets her undress him, breathing sweet into his ear, bringing his hands to her breasts, and damn if his cock isn't interested, _really_ interested, for the first time in seven decades. She presses soft kisses into his skin, and they sink into the sheets.

Steve begins to form the uncomfortable thought that maybe Stark has set this up somehow, like he's used the Internet or something to find out about him and Peggy and fondue all those years ago, or maybe Howard had told him some stories, and who _is_ this girl really, but it all dissolves as Theresa's tongue works its way up his thighs. _Oh_.

It's a blur after that. The condom's on and she's wet and he's hard and she's riding him, smooth and rhythmic, and now he's wearing a silk blindfold for some reason, maybe he asked for it or she suggested it or something, but it's good, it's so good, because he can't see and everything in this insane world feels like it's stopped for a while, everything except him and this girl who's like Peggy Carter brought back from the dead.

He comes. Loudly. She follows a few seconds later, and they lie panting softly on the bed. Steve feels all warm inside, like he's finally shaken off the last of those ice crystals from deep under the Atlantic. It's a golden glow, tingling all the way from the tips of his toes to the roots of his hair, and it's pulling him into something like sleep.

It's not that Steve didn't enjoy it; it's not that Theresa isn't beautiful, or generous, or lithe and soft in all the right places. Still, Steve's last thought before fading into unconsciousness is: if Tony's set this up, he hasn't done enough research. If he had, he'd have brought in a guy who looks like Bucky Barnes instead.


	6. Chapter 6

When Steve comes to, he's still wearing the blindfold and nothing else. He rolls over on the bed and reaches up to untie it, but suddenly there's a hand on his. It's large, rough, callused. Male. He jumps, because he had no idea a third person was in the room. With his enhanced senses, he usually hears presences, even if he doesn't see them.

"Hey," says Tony Stark's disembodied voice.

Steve's heart leaps, sending fresh blood coursing through his body, every nerve standing ready, a serum-enhanced zero to sixty in less than a second. He struggles for the blindfold again, hoping he's still asleep and this is just a bad dream.

"Steady now," Tony coos, keeping a firm hand on Steve's. Steve could overpower him easily, sock him one and leave him dazed and reeling in the corner, go find his clothes and get out of the tower and go someplace where he can sit and regret what he's done.

He doesn't, though. Because he's still all aglow after making love to Theresa. Because Tony's other hand is stroking his bare back, and Steve thinks he likes how it feels. Because Tony is climbing on top of him now, pushing his hips against Steve's, and Steve thinks he likes how it feels.

 _Because, because, because._ Steve's been making an awful lot of excuses for himself today.

When Tony releases Steve's hands, he doesn't go for the blindfold again, instead reaching out in the dark and grasping Tony's ropy shoulders. He pulls him closer, shifting his hips and bucking up into Tony's curious touches. One finger starts to probe his rectum, slick with lubricant.

Lubricant? When did Tony go for the lubricant? One hand has been stroking and the other has been prodding, sending little electric spikes skittering around Steve's skin, and Tony doesn't have a third hand. Steve is reasonably sure of that.

Maybe a robot helped Tony with the lube. Are there robots in this room, watching Tony have his way with Steve, watching Steve doing something like letting him? Where's Theresa? Is she watching too? Steve can't hear her, can't smell her anymore, but his senses aren't all with him right now so he can't be sure.

Tony has so many scars. Steve never knew. He can feel them all over his shoulders, his ribs, his back. Steve heals too fast to scar now, and Tony's uneven, mottled skin feels so _human_ under his touch. For Steve, it's another reminder of how far away from everything he really is.

Maybe that's why Steve keeps a crushing grip on Tony's shoulders as Tony spirals ever closer to his entrance, tickling the sensitive tissue there. He pushes a finger in, sharp and decisive, causing Steve to gasp softly and pull him even closer. They can feel each other's warm, quick breaths.

Steve's done this before, but he's seventy years out of practice. By god, he's missed it. While Tony's thumb roams around Steve's balls, another finger slides into his ass, again without warning, and Steve's seeing stars behind that blindfold of his. He hooks his legs around where he imagines Tony's torso is, being none too careful while he swings them up. Delirium has him half not caring if he knocks Tony out by accident.

Tony's massaging his prostate like it's what he was born to do, sending shockwaves up and down all three hundred pounds of Steve's thickly muscled body. He's lost count of Tony's fingers now and he keeps trying to speak, but sensation overwhelms those half-formed words like "yes" and "no" and "faster" and "stop". Just when his dick feels like it's about to burst, he arches up and shoots. He hears his spunk spatter on Tony's skin, wants to lift up the blindfold to see it, but that would make everything real and maybe he isn't ready for that yet.

Steve goes limp, falling into the mattress again, gasping for breath and emptied of tension for the second time today. This feeling isn't the beatific glow that Theresa left him with. It's jagged and harsh, like sparks flying from an overloaded arc reactor, but it fills the empty spaces in him just the same.

Tony slides his fingers out roughly and climbs off the bed. "See?" He says. Steve imagines he's smirking. "Told you it was fun."

There's the sound of his footfalls heading for the door. There aren't any sounds of him getting dressed. Maybe there really are no cameras here, or maybe Tony just doesn't care.

"Wait!" Steve calls out.

"What?" Says Tony. "Are you going to try to buy me dinner now?"

Steve is still blindfolded, but he can tell exactly where Tony is from the sound of his voice. He turns his head towards him and sidesteps his remark. "Who is Theresa, really?" Steve asks. _Did you go hunting for ghosts from my past and pay a girl who looks like a girl I once loved to act like she loves me for a while?_

"A friend," is all Tony will say. The door clicks, and he's gone. Steve is left bewildered and alone in this room high up in Stark Tower. He still doesn't know whether Tony set this all up, why he went along with it, why Tony did that for him or _to_ him, or whether he actually does want to buy Tony dinner now.


	7. Chapter 7

Turns out, Tony's usually the one who buys dinner. And lunch, and breakfast, and drinks and snacks. Steve has an appetite to match his metabolism, and Tony has a wallet that he prefers everyone to believe is bottomless. He teases out morsels of Steve's past life over conversations and coffee, using his memories of his father's stories and bits and pieces of SHIELD records to be insightful and prescient at all the right moments. Every uncanny guess, every understanding nod and hum says: _no one else understands you like I do, and no one else ever will._

Steve has entire abbatoirs of guts to spill. If the media catches even a glimpse of the confessions he's unloaded—with encouragement—on Tony, they'd rip America's golden boy to pieces. There's so much hurt, so much guilt, so much grief. He talks about his raging alcoholic of a father while refusing to look Tony in the eye; about how small and alone he felt when no one believed sickly, skinny Steve Rogers would ever amount to anything; about Bucky Barnes and Peggy Carter and Abraham Erskine and the Howling Commandos, who changed everything; then a pause, because they're gone now, and he, he's still young and big and blond despite everything that's fair in the world saying he should have been drowned or frozen or crushed to death in that doomed plane. There's the bright, burning anger that ignites him when he thinks about HYDRA and Loki and villains in general, and the helplessness that cripples him when he remembers all the lives he couldn't save. The knowledge that even with all that he is, he will never be enough for everyone.

Tony always chooses the right time, and strikes with surgical precision. After a while, one pointed question or sympathetic comment is all it takes to reduce the Cap to a shaking, sobbing shell of a man. "I can't get drunk, Tony, I can't make it all disappear the way you do," he'll choke out, or: "I can't go back, so please, just hold me," or: "Why am I still here? _Why am I still here?_ "

Variations on a theme.

That's the point where Tony hushes him and drags him into bed. Not that it's always a literal bed. They've fucked on tables, on floors, in bathrooms, against walls, in cars, on the Quinjet, in the labs, in the air vents after thoroughly checking for stray Hawkeyes.

Today they're up on the roof of the tower, on the lawn of one of the gardens, and Tony's sitting on Steve's dick, shaking with pleasure every time Steve rams forcefully against his ass. Come and lube and sweat leaks out onto the grass that prickles Tony's palms and soles as he braces against it. Steve likes digging his nails into Tony's deltoids, Tony doesn't really know why. He'll grab at them and hold on tight, no matter how awkward the angle. Sometimes he draws blood.

The rougher the better. That's how it goes for Tony.

"Harder," he hisses at Steve, meaning both the thrusting and the grabbing.

"I'll break you," Steve pants back.

"Then break me!" Tony howls, as Steve's cock swells ever thicker inside him and his nails rake down Tony's arms, leaving trails of red in their wake. The pain jolts him to climax, and when he and Steve come at the same time, it feels like a small earthquake shaking the rooftop garden. The grass is coated in semen, and some of it has flown as far as the flower beds.

"That's a real sight for the gardener to see," comments Steve.

"It'll work as fertilizer. Probably," Tony replies. He has no idea what he's talking about; he doesn't know from plants. He had to grow some for a school science project once. All of them withered and died soon after he touched them.


	8. Chapter 8

By now, they know every inch of each other's bodies. Steve's made a map of Tony's scars, sees pictures in them the way kids do when they look up at the clouds. Sometimes he draws all over Tony with markers until he looks like a tattooed circus freak, covered in images of lost times and lost worlds that later wash away in floods of sweat and spunk, and sometimes tears and blood.

Tony knows the gold of Steve's hair, sun-swept like a Midwestern wheat field. Knows the curve of Steve's spine, the solid thickness of his thighs, the steady _thump-thump, thump-thump_ of his superhuman heart. Well. Steady most of the time. Not when Tony breaks it on purpose, like he does almost every day.

But Steve gives as good as he gets.

That's what Tony always tells himself.

Because when Tony cuts like a scalpel with his words, Steve hits back like a sledgehammer with hands and teeth. The more he hurts inside, the stronger his blows, the deeper the scratches and bites he leaves on Tony's skin. But when he pins Tony down on the bed or the floor or wherever they are, or when he shoves Tony around like he's positioning an artist's figurine, he doesn't use his full strength. Not even a fraction of it.

Not until today, anyway.

Changes are happening at SHIELD. They're hiring masses of data analysts and trained field agents to cut their reliance on external parties, and the Avengers Initiative is taking a back seat. Still, SHIELD has asked Tony for supplies and weapons for a new op in Iran, and Barton and Romanoff are running infiltration there. One week later and it's success all round, insurgents rounded up, secret missile base destroyed, party back at headquarters.

Steve didn't even get a phone call.

"I should have been there," he grumbles.

"Doing what, exactly?" Asks Tony pointedly.

"Doing—" Steve begins to answer, then gets lost a bit, hands waving helplessly in the air. "Doing what I do," he decides finally.

Tony gives a dismissive snort. "SHIELD's agents know what they're doing. They were trained more recently than seventy years ago, you know. They understand the technology—" Steve winces, because that's always been a tough hurdle for him—"and the context of the situation."

No response from Steve. Tony presses some more.

"Come on, a guy in American flag spandex with a big shiny shield who doesn't speak a word of Farsi? You'd stop the operation before it started. Guess SHIELD doesn't have a place for old-fashioned soldiers like you anymore."

In a flash, Steve uncoils from his chair and tackles Tony to the ground. That's nothing new.

He clamps Tony's jaw shut with one strong hand and grabs the hem of Tony's shirt and rips, and suddenly there's a gag—a very tight gag—wrapped around Tony's mouth.

Okay, _that's_ new.

Steve's eyes are shining, blue as a brewing storm. "Stark," he growls, "you talk too much."


	9. Chapter 9

Tony tries to raise his head and pull the gag off and tell Steve he'll talk as much as he damn well pleases, but Steve has him pinned, and his grip is like iron. Usually, he'll feign resistance for a while before yielding and letting Tony believe he's out-muscled him; not this time. This time, he presses Tony forcibly into the ground, squeezing his wrists like a vise, one knee digging into his ribs. It hurts.

This time, it isn't a good hurt.

This time, for the first time, Tony stares into Steve's face and sees more than a broken eagle.

Steve releases Tony's left wrist and roughly grabs his chin, stroking his thumb along his beard. Tony seizes the opportunity and goes for the gag, but Steve, lightning fast, swats him away. "Busy hands," he remarks, forcing Tony's wrists together and slamming them down on the floor. "If you don't quit moving, I'll break them."

This time, it's not a warning. It's a threat.

Steve's growing erection rubs against Tony's groin, separated by denim and linen and zippers. Steve almost looks embarrassed by it, like he's finally seeing the pattern now but his body picked up on it long before he did.

And that's it right there, the small flicker of doubt that tells Tony now's the time to open his mouth and say something to freeze all the blood in Steve's veins, to tip him over and shatter him like glass and make him beg to be put back together. To make him stop this.

Problem is, right now Tony can't say anything at all, so Steve grows resolute once more and his blood remains warm as blood should, and nothing stops. "Should I fuck you now?" He whispers in Tony's ear.

The word doesn't sound as foreign on his tongue as it used to. He doesn't say _make love_ anymore.

Tony wants to talk. It's his turn to talk now, or it should be. He keeps trying to work his jaw and make sounds, but all it does is chafe his skin against the torn fabric edges of the gag. Not a good hurt. Not a good hurt.

Steve opens his fly and lets his dick slap onto Tony's stomach. He unbuttons Tony's pants too, shoving his hips up to pull down the waistband like he's jacking up a car with a flat tire. He makes a surprised face when he sees Tony's flaccid length. "What's wrong? Aren't you up for it?"

Tony still can't say a thing. What was once the hem of his expensive shirt is cutting into his face, damp with his spit and the vapor on his breath, conducting the smell of his lunch back up to his nose. He wants to retch, but his jaw can't move the right way.

"What am I talking about?" Steve asks himself. "You're always up for it."

 _No I'm not. Am I?_ Tony doesn't even have time to think before Steve brushes his full, wet lips against his nose and bears down on him with all his weight, digging his fingernails into the familiar slopes of Tony's shoulders. The scent of Steve is everywhere, and the dead nerves lining Tony's scars sing to life and then straight to overload, and okay, maybe Steve isn't Pavlov's only dog here.

The tip of Tony's cock starts to twitch, but at the same time his heart is racing and he's sweating bullets and the room is twisting and lurching. Where is JARVIS, who continuously monitors Tony's vital signs in case of intruders and assassins? Why hasn't he noticed what's happening and raised the alarm?

Oh. Right. Tony remembers, and wants to kick himself now: panic, by the numbers, looks a lot like arousal, and after so many false positives in Stark Tower's myriad rooms, JARVIS can't tell the difference anymore.

Tony's not too sure he knows it himself.

Steve fondles Tony's quivering, stiffening cock as his own stands tall and proud in front of him. "Do you want to jerk me off?" He asks. He's used those exact words before, in a much different tone, checking if Tony wants to finish him off with a hand job or if he should do it himself, and Tony usually obliges him. Today, he doesn't have much of a choice; guided by Steve, he wraps his hands around Steve's shaft and starts stroking up and down, pressing gently on the frenulum, moving his talented hands the way he knows Steve wants him to.

Wait. When did this become about pleasing Steve, really deeply pleasing him, and not just breaking him and owning him?

"Speak up if you want to stop or switch over," says Steve, then smiles like he's proud of the great idea he just gave himself. "Oh, yeah, let's— _ahh_ —how about I blow you— _mmm_ —after? You'd like that— _ugh_ —wouldn't you?"

Still bound by the gag, Tony just pumps stronger and faster on Steve's dick, like his hands are his voice now and he has to keep up with Steve's words. It's working, almost. Tony's palms are slick with precome, and with each furious stroke, Steve is having a harder and harder time with sentences.

But he manages. "Say something, Tony," he taunts. "D-d-don't you...want...your cock...my m-mouth? Come on...tell me...y-yes or no —" his hips are rocking now, in time with his words, and Tony keeps up easily—"because if you— _ah_ —if you don't say yes—"

 _Yes, damn it, yes!_ Tony yells with his hands, and seconds later Steve echoes him with his voice and his cock, spilling come all over Tony's ripped shirt and collapsing on top of him, satisfied and utterly spent.

 _Second wind,_ is what Tony would be saying aloud now if he could. _Any time now. Three, two, one..._

It's a flurry of motion. Suddenly both their shirts are gone, flung aside in multiple pieces, and Tony has been lifted and pushed and maneuvered onto his hands and knees above Steve. He's so hard now, it's starting to ache.

"I like you like this," Steve drawls. "Isn't it better without all the talking?" He reaches up with a finger to tease at the edges of Tony's gag. "But if you're tired, I'll untie it and we can stop...or do you want to keep it on and let me suck you off?"

Tony nods vigorously, sending drops of sweat flying from his hair. Then he stops and shakes his head instead, because he doesn't know if Steve will take that as _yes, untie it_ or _no, don't stop_. Desperately, he grabs Steve's hand and pushes it away, moving forward to touch his lips and hoping he gets the message.

He does. He takes Tony's cock slowly, with gentle sucking motions, and it's delicious but infuriating at the same time. _Faster,_ Tony wants to demand, but he can't. Steve take his time, and Tony thinks he's doing it on purpose now because the anticipation builds and builds and then rushes down in a cascade of ecstasy when Steve finally swallows him deep, tongue and teeth rolling like thunder, and it's like Steve's mouth was made for Tony's dick—his, and no one else's.

Soon Tony is shuddering with pleasure all over, making high-pitched, stuttering sounds out of his nose. He wants to speak so badly, wants to scream Steve's name over and over again, but the gag holds fast, and now there's a ray of sun the color of Steve's hair angling through the window and searing his eyes, and there's Steve's warm tongue lapping at his balls and Steve's nails raking up and down his scars and every single one of Tony's senses is all wrapped up in Steve, Steve, Steve.

His orgasm is explosive. In his head it sounds like he's roaring, wordless.

Steve pulls Tony's head gently towards him and finally, finally unwraps the gag. Dropping it on the floor, he stares up at Tony with big eyes, mouth smeared in pearly skeins of white and hanging half-open, waiting for him to speak. He's expecting Tony to let loose with his sharpest words and cut him down again, but he's not shrinking back. Heroics—he can't help it.

Tony unlocks his jaw and moves it around. He coughs, tries to dispel the soreness, but he doesn't say a word. Right now, he feels like he doesn't need to.


	10. Chapter 10

It's morning, and Steve is nowhere to be found.

Granted, he doesn't usually stick around after Tony's done with him. They're magnets, the two of them, drawn together and pulled apart by forces all their own as they spin and spin around themselves. Steve comes and goes, floating in and out of Tony's orbit, haunting the quiet spaces of Stark Tower like a ghost. He's always there when Tony wants him, that's the important thing.

Except today, when Tony wants Steve acutely and Steve is nowhere. Not in any of the kitchens emptying the fridges and pantries into his mouth; not in the gyms destroying the overpriced equipment; not in the penthouse sketching out the city and confusing it with that other city in his mind; not at SHIELD headquarters trying to be relevant.

Tony casts a net around New York City and finds that Steve is neither in Central Park, where he runs every day, nor in the Brooklyn brownstone where SHIELD has been putting him up since he came out of the ice. Then where...?

Never mind. Tony goes on with his day, or tries to. There are board meetings, emails to read, forms to sign, armor components to test. Later, Bruce shows up with some ridiculous new theory and commandeers the lab and rolls his eyes at Tony for breaking out the whiskey at three in the afternoon. Tony tries to pay attention to his blather about neutrino this and positron that but he can't stop thinking about Steve, Steve all blond and strong and noble, Steve all honesty and truth.

Steve, who's proven he can push back, stunningly vicious.

It started as an experiment, to see if Tony could crack Captain America's shell. It worked.

He broke the shell, but he didn't expect to find a human underneath, and now he doesn't know what to do with it.

He has to find him.


	11. Chapter 11

Steve can't believe it's taken him this long to see it.

Has he been so wrapped up in his own pain and loss that he never realized Tony was using him? All those conversations about New York in the Depression years, his childhood, the army, the Commandos, everything and everyone he misses—Steve took it for comfort and friendship, maybe even love, but it was all just tactical maneuvering. Shit, he thinks he's actually known what Tony's been doing for a good while now, but he refused to lift the blindfold and _see_ it.

He's been naïve. Alone and adrift in the new world, he swam eagerly to the only lighthouse he could see, a lighthouse that beamed blue and called out to him in the night—but rocks and monsters crowded the shallows, unseen, and before he knew it he was pulled into that dark vortex of genius and hunger, those swirling waters endlessly refracting the pieces of his past.

After what he did yesterday, Steve is determined to break out of the undertow. He's done with looking backwards. He'll never forget the way his life used to be or the people he loved, but it's time to move on now.

That's why he's riding his motorcycle to Newark to try again with one of the girlfriends he had before this whole thing with Tony started. He pulls up in front of the art gallery where she works, where they used to meet for dates before Steve broke it off.

She tells him to get lost, because if she wasn't good enough for him the first time she won't be good enough the second time either. Steve makes a quick exit and spends hours riding aimlessly in circles around the city, lost in his thoughts.

An upsetting number of those thoughts are about Tony.

Steve can't say what drove him to tie that gag on him yesterday. Forcing someone into something against their will, using his strength to dominate, _taunting_ someone who can't escape—that's not Steve at all. He thinks Tony brings out the worst in him, just like on that July day back in the boxing gym.

He needed Tony to shut up for a while so he could hear himself think. That's the excuse he makes for himself this time.

He's always making excuses when it comes to Tony.

But Steve can't think of an excuse for why they had sex right after that, instead of talking it out like reasonable people. Insofar as Tony Stark can be a reasonable person. The dinner bell rang and Steve salivated on command, but that's not a reason, that's his own fault but it's kind of Tony's fault too, and now Steve feels like he's made some bad choices but what Tony's been doing is wrong too and now he just doesn't know anymore.

He stops for gas and a soda and a bag of chips. A guy approaches him as he gets back on the bike and asks, "excuse me, but are you Steve Rogers? Captain America?"

Steve says yes and waits for him to proffer a photo or poster or something for autographing, or to get his phone out and ask him to pose for a 'selfie', but instead the guy starts talking about what an inspiration Steve is. He's an Afghanistan vet who came home this year and civilian life has been tough for him, he saw so much terrible stuff out there and had so many flashbacks and his boyfriend said he was a basket case and walked out, and he was so bitter about everything until the Avengers burst onto the newsreels and Steve's story gave him hope, you know? Because if a guy from World War II can adjust to regular life and be okay then he can too, and he's gotten much better, and every platoon should have a guy like Steve in charge, and it's a shame what happened with the diner waitress and the tabloids because Steve deserves better than that and wait a minute, is he flirting? That's one thing that hasn't changed much since the forties. He's definitely flirting.

Steve says it hasn't been easy for him either and cracks some joke about how smartphones are too complicated for old men like him. The guy laughs. His name is Sam and he seems nice and genuine and he isn't bad-looking at all, so instead of politely bowing out of the conversation, Steve asks him if he wants to go get coffee.

He has to get Tony out of his head somehow.


	12. Chapter 12

It's evening, and the sky is the color of fallen leaves. After searching and searching, Tony finds Steve in Newark, of all places. In a cafe. With another man. They're smiling and laughing and Steve's eyes are more blue than Tony has ever seen them, even brighter than when they're reflecting his arc reactor back at him.

Tony doesn't think, just marches up to their table and says, "Steve."

The Cap's head whips around like a propeller. "Tony? What are you doing here?"

"What are _you_ doing here?" Tony retorts.

"I'm on a date," Steve replies evenly.

Date? It's only one word, but it's enough to short-circuit Tony's brain. He feels like the world has gone hurtling off its axis and no one bothered to tell him. _Date_? But he, but Steve, but they—

The other guy at the table—Steve's date—gives Tony a friendly wave. "Hi, I'm Sam. Oh, I know you, you're Iron Man! Awesome!"

Tony feels decidedly not awesome right now. He still can't think of what to say. Steve is staring at him with wary anticipation now, and the other guy is just staring. Tony struggles to get his thoughts in order. "I need to talk to you," he tells Steve, "alone."

"Can't it wait?" Steve says, making a face like he's trying really hard to get his point across, and repeats, "I'm on a date."

Tony fumbles for something, anything, that will get Steve to do what he wants him to. "Theresa was just some girl I hired to loosen you up," he blurts out. "That's not even her real name."

Steve chokes on his coffee a little. "Outside," he orders, wiping his mouth. "Sam, I'm really sorry, but could you excuse us for a while? I'll be back in a few minutes."

Sam just smiles and nods. He's probably assumed they're speaking in Avengers Code Language now. Steve strides out the door, and Tony almost has to jog to keep up with him.

"Explain," Steve demands.

" _You_ explain!" Tony cries. It's such a juvenile response, especially when Tony prides himself on being a master of rhetoric, but when he's around Steve every thread in his mind fails to execute and he can't do any better than stupid retorts like these. It wasn't always this way, not until they got all twisted up in each other. "You can't be on a date," he says.

"Why not?"

"What do you mean, 'why not'? Because _us_! Because we, we're—" Tony lets out a frustrated sigh, gesturing frantically at himself, at Steve, and at the space between them. Strangely, the words _because you're mine_ never occur to him. Wasn't that the plan? What happened to the plan?

The dying sun flits through Steve's hair as he shakes his head. "What are we?" He asks softly. "Tony, you said it yourself—no strings attached. We were just having sex, having fun, until I got back on my feet."

His words hit Tony like a punch to the gut.

Not a good hurt.


	13. Chapter 13

The words were out of Steve's mouth before he could stop himself, and now his head is pounding and his superhuman insides are churning. Oh god, he can't stop, he can't stop. It must have been Tony who taught him how to twist the knife. "I assumed you had other people when I wasn't around," he adds. "And you're right, casual sex _is_ a lot fun, but I'm ready to find something real now—a real relationship." Lies, lies, lies. Captain America doesn't lie. What's _happened_ to him?

"I'm sorry, I was under the impression _we_ were in a real relationship," Tony sneers.

"Tony," Steve says, fighting to stay calm, "it's not a real relationship when you take advantage of how rotten I feel about myself and my place in your world to keep me coming back to you. Or—or when you lie to me, and pretend to care about me, and set me up with your 'friend' who's really a call girl you paid to, to...to _loosen me up_ and make me forget how to say no to you!"

"You said yes a lot more often than you said no," Tony points out.

"That's not the _point_!" Steve yells. "When people are in a real relationship, they do stuff like...like dancing! And watching movies together, and kissing, and not _lying_ to each other! I trusted you, Tony. That was a mistake."

He's like a runaway train now. He can't stop himself. If this is talking it out like a reasonable person, then Steve he doesn't want to talk it out like a reasonable person anymore, he just wants to throw Tony down on the pavement right here and now and fuck him senseless until they're both screaming their lungs out like nothing else matters, until all these stupid complicated feelings stream out of them like meltwater and blood.


	14. Chapter 14

Tony Stark has always been a great inventor. He's spent his life inventing planes, robots, AIs, weapons, and enough bullshit to fertilize every farm in the country for a hundred years. Lies, deception, manipulation—it's what he's good at and it always gets him what he wants, and by now it's second nature, easy as breathing, for him to just carry on spinning that web.

"Who else would have helped you, Steve?" He demands. "Who else would have started a relationship with you and _stayed_ , given the state you were in?"

"Christ, Tony, stop saying we're in a relationship!"

Tony keeps his voice level and repeats, "who else?"

"Who else? Oh, I don't know, how about the man I'm currently _on a date with_?" Steve fires back.

Tony glances back into the cafe, where Sam is playing with his phone at the table and tapping his foot on the floor. The guy is all muscles and military bearing, buzzcut and smooth dark skin, and now suddenly Tony's thinking about his own skin, pasty and marked and warped where it meets that great empty hole in his chest. A sinking feeling drags at the machinery he calls his heart as he realizes his money, his brilliant mind, his possessions and his inventions are nothing compared to being young and strong and vital and most likely not a colossal fuck-up who only knows how to relate to people by playing them like pawns on a chessboard and incinerating anyone who comes too close.

...No, no, he can't quit now, there's still time to change Steve's mind. He's Tony Stark, after all, and with the right words he can make anyone do anything. He takes a step closer to Steve, who backs up until he's pressed against the wall of the building. "Do you think," says Tony, pointing at Sam through the window, "he would've even looked at you before I fixed you?"

Immediately, Steve plants his hands on Tony's chest and shoves him away. Yes—this is what Tony's been angling for. As he staggers backward, the wind forced out of his lungs, Steve sidesteps and puts some distance between the two of them. "You didn't fix a thing," he snaps, fists clenching and unclenching by his sides. "I told you, I wasn't broken."

Tony crowds into Steve's space again. "Really?" He prods. "So you've forgotten the long, _long_ list of people who gave up on you and kicked you out of bed before I stepped up to the plate?"

Narrowing his eyes, Steve moves closer, closer, until his long shadow engulfs Tony's. He's not backing off this time. "What did you say? You 'stepped up to the plate'? I'm not a baseball! Do you think—oh." He stops. There's that expression again, purple-gray in the twilight, the puzzle pieces falling into place. "That _is_ what you think, isn't it? You looked at me and you saw a challenge. To you, I was a problem to solve. A game to win."

"I just wanted to help you," Tony insists, deflecting, not wanting to let Steve know how right he is. And how wrong he is, now that something indefinable in Tony has shifted, something he has no idea how to deal with, something that should have and would have stayed dead and buried if he'd just kept away from Steve goddamn Rogers and his goddamn integrity and idealism and his perfect fucking way of being his perfect fucking self, flaws and regrets and all.

Tony never did know how to leave well enough alone.

"How do I know that's not another lie?" Steve mutters. He's pacing back and forth, looking everywhere but at Tony. "You know, sometimes...sometimes I can't tell the difference between you and Loki."

All of Tony's oxygen seizes up in his throat as he fights down the tears that are suddenly swimming in his eyes, thinking, _neither can I. I'm trying. I'm trying._

"Because everything's about you, isn't it?" Steve continues. "It's the Tony Stark Show. Well, you and me—" is his voice cracking?—"we had our fun. You got what you wanted. Congratulations, you won the game."

Tony is still reeling, speechless even though there's no gag on him this time. This doesn't feel like winning.

Steve ceases his pacing and lets out an exasperated sigh. "I don't even know what you want from me here," he tells Tony. "What do I have to do to make you leave so I can get back to my date?" He gestures back to the cafe, but the table where they were sitting is empty now. The bell on the door chimes as Sam steps out.

"Hey guys," he says, "sorry, but I need to get a move on, I have to be somewhere at eight." He looks at Steve, scratches his head awkwardly, then decides to go for a handshake. "It was good to meet you, Cap."

Steve draws him into a hug instead and whispers, "take care of yourself." They let go, and Sam disappears down the quiet street.

 _This is my chance_ , thinks Tony. He has Steve alone, the other guy is gone, and Steve is about to bolt too but Tony won't let that happen. _I can't lose you_. The threads of habit are tying together fast, lighting up the circuits in his marvelous brain that do nothing but calculate the most effective way to maneuver everything and everyone to his advantage. Unconsciously, he's already strategizing, pulling the strings, looking for just the right words to lead Steve back into his waiting arms.

Consciously, though, he's looking at Steve's face, and the hurt, accusing glare there runs him through like a blade. It's like the look Pepper gives him when he fucks up and does something idiotic and she has to clean up after him, except coming from Steve it's much, much worse, and Tony is thoroughly confused now because this isn't this what he wanted all along? Isn't this the whole point of everything?

It's starting to dawn on Tony that no, Steve is upset and that's not what he wants at all, not anymore. He wants Steve to be happy, but damn it, he wants Steve to be happy with _him_ —but if he can't have that, he'll go for the next best thing. He's Tony Stark and Tony Stark breaks things a lot, but sometimes he also fixes things, and he's going to fix this even if it costs him everything.

"Go," he tells Steve quietly, "run. You can catch up to him. If you can't, I...I'll tap the security feeds around the area, see where he's going, or I'll get you his phone number, you can call him...you can call him and see if he'll meet you again."

Steve's glower melts away, replaced by a suspicious stare. That's an improvement. Maybe. "Tony," he says, "you interrupted us and dragged me out here so you could get me away from Sam. Now you want to help me find him again? What's your angle? What game are you playing this time?" His voice is shaking, and he adds, "why are you doing this?"

The wheels in Tony's head are grinding against each other, and he's already starting to prevaricate. _Come on,_ he tells himself. _Cut the crap and be honest with someone for once in your life._ Steve is standing there waiting for an answer, shifting his weight anxiously from foot to foot, and suddenly Tony utters, "because I think I'm in love with you."

Oh, _crap_. Did he just say that out loud? Steve has a look on his face like he's just been hit by a bus, which tells Tony yes, yes he did just say that out loud. _Shit, shit, shit_. Tony now remembers why he doesn't tell the truth very often, because things like _this_ happen whenever he tries.

This isn't the first time he's told someone he loves them. It's not even the first time he's said it and meant it. And he really can, you know. He _can_ love like a normal person. It's just he hasn't had much practice, and when he was growing up no one ever showed him how. Tony thinks he must have been doing it wrong all these years, because things always degenerate into a flaming car wreck soon after those words leave his mouth. What's that saying about doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result?

It doesn't matter, because this time it's far worse than a flaming car wreck. Without a word, Steve turns on his heels and sprints off to the parking lot on the other side of the building. There's the roar of a motorcycle engine, and he's gone.

 _Great job, me,_ Tony says to himself. _Way to fix things._


	15. Chapter 15

Today has been altogether too much for Steve. Right now he'd rather deal with another Chitauri army than with Tony Stark. He parks his bike by the river and wanders up and down the banks, lost in thought. He didn't go after Sam like Tony told him to. How can he? How can he focus on anyone else when thoughts of Tony billow through his mind like clouds before the sun?

 _I think I'm in love with you_. Oh dear god.

Was it the truth? Steve can't tell, he can't tell at all. It's accepted as fact by everyone who knows him that Tony Stark has love enough only for himself, and the man does command an immense talent for lies. Steve meant what he said before: Tony and Loki, they're so similar it's frightening.

But there's a difference there too, Steve knows, an important difference that he can't ignore. It's not just that Tony's mortal and human, with scarred skin that speaks of struggle and survival, with skilled hands that do miraculous things to Steve's body. It's not just that; it's also the view from the ground on that day in Manhattan, the image burned into Steve's mind, of a red and gold speck vanishing into the alien portal in the sky. It's Stark Industries and its mission to give everyone electricity without polluting the planet. It's the maelstrom of good intentions and ego, impulse and piercing logic, heroism and fear that coalesces into Tony Stark and breaks apart again, always fighting itself for the right to exist.

He's not the same as Loki, a destroyer and a conquerer. Tony's a good guy; Steve just isn't sure if he's a good person.

 _I think I'm in love with you_. Can it possibly be true? Is this what Tony does to the people he loves, weaves and winds around them with his tricks and illusions until they're suspended in cocoons, lightless, with no choice but to love him back? Who _does_ that? Steve's confident this isn't just him being old-fashioned. Even in this modern age, love is love—he's seen how couples on the street hold hands and laugh, how Hawkeye and Black Widow will each fight to the end to keep the other safe, how Jane Foster bounded out of the plane from Norway and Thor embraced her like he'd never let go. Steve's been in love before, with Bucky and then with Peggy and with others besides, and things were never like this, the way they are with Tony. It was different. No lies, no pain. At least, not until Bucky's fall.

The fall. Steve remembers having that conversation with Tony. It ended with him in tears and wanting to leap out of the nearest window. Predictably, they fucked instead, and he scratched Tony's skin red-raw and bit down hard enough to taste salt and iron.

Does it count as bullying if you're the one leaving marks and bruises?

Bullying. With a start, Steve realizes that's the word for it. Tony's played him for a fool, taken advantage of him, _bullied_ him. In the same moment Steve starts to understand why he did what he did yesterday, ruthless and cruel with his makeshift gag and his overwhelming power. He had to stand up for himself, and it seems like he's picked up Tony's habit of never doing things by halves.

God, the things Tony's done to him, the things he's made him do. He's changed him. Steve's whole life has been changes and changes, and even now he still can't tell which ones are good or bad. And he could have stopped it, he tells himself, but he didn't. Because the truth is, he wanted it too. Because Tony's touch feels so good on his skin even as that same touch rips holes through his heart that no super serum can repair.

He could have stopped it. He could have walked away any time. Hell, he should have walked away on day one and never looked back and— _and what?_ Steve asks himself. And carried on being lonely, angry, and confused, waving at the world from under sheets of ice? He doesn't know, he just doesn't know. This is what Tony does to him, fills his head with questions and doubts and shadows and makes him run in circles around himself like a robot programmed wrong.

When Steve met Sam today he felt those circles starting to uncurl, felt his feet touch the ground, solid and real, for the first time in a long time. He likes Sam; he wonders what the two of them could be. He wonders if Tony really can find out his number.

A night breeze stirs the surface of the river. Steve stops and stares as though expecting answers to rise from the murky water.


	16. Chapter 16

Tony doesn't like the bars and clubs in New Jersey. They don't revere him like a deity here the way they do in Manhattan. Still, he spends the evening bouncing between one and another, downing shots and pretentious cocktails until he's off his face and throwing punches and bad pick-up lines at random strangers. There are pills and powders, his body feels like it's on fire, and the pounding music squeezes him from all directions until he's convinced he's going to burst like a balloon.

He somehow manages to make it back to his tower without landing in the emergency room en route. He's a little foggy on the details. Or, okay, a lot foggy. For all he knows he could have built a working teleportation device from the contents of the bar's dumpster and set it to self-destruct after use so no one would steal his design. After some consideration, though, he figures it's more likely Pepper and Happy had something to do with it. Those two should get a raise or something. For so long now they've been putting up with his hopeless drunken ass—hopeless, like his father always said, hopeless, and that's why Steve's gone, gone, gone.

Tony braces himself against a table and groans. Heat radiates through his chest as the ion filter he installed in his newest arc reactor kicks into overdrive, flushing out his blood and sobering him up. Pepper warned him it wouldn't be a good idea because with great power comes great responsibility, and she doesn't think Tony's responsible enough to hold what's effectively an infinitely reusable get-out-of-drunk-free card. _You'll do whatever you had to get done while sober and then start drinking again right away_ , she said. _No, Pepper, you don't understand, that's the whole point,_ he said, at which point she shook her head and left the workshop. That's Pepper for you, efficiency and foresight and disapproving looks, always keeping Tony on track with his work and helping him not die.

She was right, the ion filter was a bad idea, but for a completely different reason. Tony really wishes he thought of including an off switch now, because there are times when it would be nice to stay completely and utterly wasted for hours. Times when forgetting is all he wants to do. Times like now, for example.

It's too late to switch to his old reactor. The filter has already throttled his impending case of alcohol poisoning down to a faint buzz. Tony is wide awake now, lying back and staring at the ceiling, an overturned car spinning its wheels in the air. His residual altered state has sharpened his senses, rendering him painfully aware of every little noise in the rooms around him and every little voice inside his head telling him what an incredible fuck-up he is. He can't drown it out, he can't fall sleep, he can't even black out and collapse on the floor in a puddle of liquor-laced drool. Fucking ion filter.

This is a waste of time. Who needs sleep, anyway? Who needs nightmares of starless alien voids and nuclear fire and eternities alone? Who needs those two strong hands to shake him awake in the dead of night, those two blue eyes to anchor him and bring him back to the world? Not Tony. No way. Nope.

He gets up and walks around. Goes to the lab, shuffles some schematics and notes around, stares blankly at Bruce's illegible scrawls and diagrams of electron capture, has an epiphany and loses it within the space of a second. He flicks through his phone looking for someone he can call up for pity sex at ass o'clock in the morning. Bruce, no. Pepper, no. Barton, no, not unless he wants Romanoff to slit his throat and chop him to pieces and fling his remains into the East River one by one. Tony scrolls past a lot of names he doesn't recognize. Janet, Ben, Emma, Logan—who even are these people and why does he have their numbers? He keeps searching, moving up and down the list, and his thumb lands on Theresa's name. No, no, definitely no. Tony needs someone who'll hurt him and not let up. He needs pain to crowd out this empty, hollow feeling.

It's hours to sunrise and Grand Central down below is dead quiet. Voices, none of them human, blink in and out of the crushing stillness. Tony doesn't call anyone. He puts on loud music and hammers away at armor prototypes. He switches reactors and drains a bottle of port. It doesn't help.

Time stretches on until suddenly the intercom buzzes. Tony looks up at the video feed and there's Steve at the door, a hulking shape whose outline glows dimly in the pre-dawn light. Tony gets in the elevator, turning away from the mirror so he doesn't have to look at his own swollen eyes or at the motor oil stains and the sticky, dried patches of someone else's spilled drink on the shirt he still hasn't changed out of. Fifteen floors later, they're face-to-face.

"Hi," says Steve.

"Hi," replies Tony.

"You're in love with me," Steve mumbles.

 _Go ahead and rub it in_ , thinks Tony. "Yeah. I guess I am."

"Okay," Steve says slowly, taking a deep breath, "okay. We can work with that."

"We—wait, what?"


	17. Chapter 17

_What am I doing here?_ Is a question Steve often asks himself when in Tony's presence, along with _How did this happen?_ and _Why do I keep coming back?_. The answers still aren't entirely clear to him, but if he can explain it to Tony now, maybe he'll finally be able to explain it to himself. He runs a hand through his hair.

"I don't love you," is the first thing he says, and Tony's face falls. Maybe he shouldn't have opened with that. "At least, not right now," he adds, "but I...I think I could."

Tony furrows his brow and bites his lip thoughtfully, the same way he always does when he's working and ruminating on some terribly complicated science problem. "You don't hate me?" He ventures. "Because you should. I know forgiveness is your _thing_ , Cap, but this time it doesn't make any sense."

"I know," Steve says, "I know. But this thing we're doing, you and me—it's alien logic. It's a parallel world. Things make sense in a different way." More excuses. What's the difference between forgiveness and surrender?

Tony smirks crookedly at him. "Couldn't have put it better myself."

Steve tilts his head at the hallway behind Tony. "Can I come inside? It's pretty cold out here."

"Oh, yeah. Right," Tony mumbles, moving aside, "I can't tell, I'm still kind of drunk."

"Um." Steve falters. "If this isn't a good time..."

"Can't be worse than any other time," replies Tony with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Kitchen?"

"Sure. I could use some breakfast."

"Normal humans aren't hungry for breakfast at six in the morning," Tony grumbles.

"I couldn't sleep any more. And I'm not a normal human," Steve reminds him, "and you aren't either."

Shrugging, Tony scratches the skin at the edge of his arc reactor. "Fair enough."

JARVIS has overheard them, and in the kitchen on the second floor they find the lights on, the stove hot, and the coffee machine bubbling. Dum-E rolls up to Steve with its grasper outstretched, offering him a dripping, lacerated tomato.

This tower is almost sentient. Steve it unsettling at first, but now he mostly takes it for granted. It's part of the future, this future everyone dreamed of all those years ago at the World Exposition, rushing and dazzling and wondrous, equipped with its own mad visionary of a Stark. It's a future of men on the moon and medical marvels, supercomputers and flying battleships, changing and evolving faster and faster all the time. It's a future of aliens and monsters and war, solitude and desperation. Every day the present crashes down on top of the past and waits for the future to do the same—what's the difference between change and destruction?

Now's not the time for philosophy. Steve came here to deal with far more complicated things. He scrambles some eggs while Tony pours an espresso and slumps down at the table. With Steve at the stove, Tony's looking at his back, and that's probably a good thing for now.

"What happened with Sergeant Buzzcut from Newark?" Asks Tony, bleary-voiced.

"Didn't catch him," says Steve. "Guess I couldn't run fast enough."

"That's a load of crap," Tony rejoins.

"Then I've just evened out the scales," Steve parries, shooting for light and joking but hitting bitter and vindictive instead. He winces a little at the sound of his own voice, and he thinks Tony does too, if the ensuing silence is any clue.

After a while, Tony asks, "so you really...? You didn't?"

Steve sighs. What's he supposed to say to that? _No, I didn't even try to follow him because I wanted you instead and I don't even know why. My heart's all full of you and there's no room for anyone else._ "No," he confirms. "Why, who'd _you_ sleep with last night?"

"No one, not that I can remember. I went clubbing and now I'm missing a large chunk of last night and/or this morning," Tony answers casually, like losing hours of his life doing things he has no control over is as routine for him as it is for Dr. Banner. "I haven't slept with anyone else since we first fucked," he adds off-handedly.

Steve freezes. "You mean since the first time you fucked me," he whispers.

"Semantics," Tony tries, but Steve isn't having it. He steadies himself, glaring at the wall behind the stove, at his own hands grasping the spatula with white knuckles, at his eggs and tomatoes beginning to char in the pan because he's still not ready to turn around and look at Tony.

"You took what you wanted and you never even asked," Steve mutters. "That's not my idea of what happens when two people fuck."

"All right, have it your way," replies Tony acidly, "let's talk about the first time _you_ fucked _me_."

Control. It's always been about control. They can lie to themselves all they like about desire and orgasms maybe even love, but in the end all they're doing is trading blows, hurting and being hurt, running roughshod in their metal soles and combat boots over that line between control and dominance, scuffing and scratching until it's nothing but faded chalk.

"This is so messed up," Steve admits.

"You're telling me," Tony groans.

Steve puts down the spatula and brings his food to the table and sits down. Tony has emptied his coffee mug and dropped his head onto the back of his chair, eyelids heavy with sleep. He must have been up all night, Steve figures, because he smells of wine and engine oil and that's the same shirt he was wearing yesterday. Tony Stark and sleep don't mix well; Steve's seen him stay up for days at a time before exhaustion claims him, and even when he's out cold he doesn't stop kicking and struggling and thinking and talking, making phone calls back through time that Steve only ever hears one side of. _I'll kill you_ , he'll threaten, _I'll kill you all—no, don't go_ , he'll plead, _you're all I have, don't go._

There's real night, and there's the false night that exists in the windowless innards of the tower; Tony dreams through both. Sometimes a night terror traps him in a place halfway between asleep and awake, fear and panic walling him in, and he thrashes and hollers like a man possessed, staring through Steve at something only he can see. Those are the nights when Tony flinches away from Steve's touch, when all Steve wants to do is brandish his shield at the invisible creatures that hunt Tony while he sleeps, when all he can do is climb on top of him and hold him down with his great weight and hit him until the nightmares fall away.

Those are the nights when Tony, saucer-eyed and freshly bruised, says nothing, only buries his face in Steve's chest and breathes as he tries to remember when and where he is. No bravado, no calculation, no poison darts aimed with precision at Steve's vulnerabilities. When he's feeling optimistic, Steve chooses to believe this is who Tony really is. The other Tony comes back, he always does, but Steve always manages to get up and leave before that happens.

Steve doesn't know what happens when Tony's alone with his nightmares. He must wake up on his own eventually. He must deal with it all the time, actually, because Steve isn't around for long most nights. After sex, they tend to peel apart like the shore and the retreating wave as some kind of instinctive feeling drives Steve to get away from Tony, to put as much distance as he can between them until they inevitably drift together again.

Tony's eyes are shut now.

"I love you, Steve. I really do," he says to the ceiling. "I want to make this work. Tell me what I have to do to not fuck it up."

They've already fucked it up. Both of them. Steve knows that. But isn't that why he came back here, to see if he and Tony together can forge something whole from the shrapnel encircling each of their hearts? "Tony," he says, "you're not like anyone I've ever loved before. You're—"

"A self-obsessed jerk? A total asshole?" Tony supplies helpfully.

"Well," Steve pauses, "yeah. But I can see the good in you—and that's what kills me about all this, do you understand?"

Tony snorts, lips twisting. "The good in me? Are you trying to assimilate me into the collective? I can't be a shining paragon of justice like you. Just look at what I've done. Look at who I am."

"That's not what I mean," Steve says, making a mental note to ask Hawkeye or Agent Hill or someone if _assimilate me into the collective_ is a reference to something. "I'm just saying—"

"No, I get what you're saying," says Tony, cutting him off. "I understand 'good'—" he's making air quotes—"in theory. But you're going to have to be more specific with what you want from me."

Specific. Okay. Steve can do that. "Right," he says, not missing a beat, "number one, stop lying to me."

"Done." Tony makes a check mark in the air with his finger. It makes the hairs on the back of Steve's neck stand up just for a second.

"You can turn it on and off? Just like that?"

"Do you really want to know?" Tony dares him, bloodshot eyes glittering dangerously.

Steve relents. "Maybe not." Not right now, anyway. He'll be busy for a while, unpacking this Tony-shaped box of miracles and horrors.

Tony stands up to get more coffee. "Dum-E," he says to the robot sitting in the corner and doing its best to look nonchalant, "make yourself useful and get me some Pop-Tarts, will you?"

It's not even weird that he talks to his robot like it's a person. It's not even weird that Steve is having this conversation with Tony while a robot and an artificial intelligence and who knows what other inventions listen in on them. This is how he lives now.

Dum-E opens the freezer and retrieves the box, but holds it upside-down and spills the little foil packages all over the floor by Steve's feet. "Pop-Tarts are not real food," he admonishes as he gathers them up and pushes them across the table at Tony, remembering his thing about being handed things.

"I'll worry about my diet when I no longer have a nuclear fusion reactor implanted in my body," Tony quips, unwrapping the pastries and dropping them into the toaster. "So. Anything else?"

It's been eating at Steve since the beginning. He has to know. "Did Howard ever tell you about Peggy Carter?"

"Sometimes. Always as a sidenote, whenever he talked about this fantastic guy he knew called Steve Rogers," answers Tony with a smirk. "Why?"

"The call girl you hired for me, the one whose real name isn't Theresa—she's a dead ringer for Peggy. Did you do that on purpose?"

"Ah. Well." Tony stares steadfastly into the glowing toaster coils. "Some or all of what I said about that particular incident may not have been entirely true."

 _Naturally_ , thinks Steve with a sigh. "Then give me the truth. All of it."

"Where do I start?" Mumbles Tony. "That's her real name. She's not a call girl. And it depends on what you mean by 'on purpose'. If she looks like your ex-girlfriend, that's one hundred per cent a coincidence."

"She brought my guard down," Steve intones, "and then you, you—"

Tony buries his face in his hands. "Yeah, no. The bait-and-switch was me. All me. I put her up to it, I told her it was what you wanted. Don't...don't blame her, okay?"

He doesn't. The fact that Tony cooked up the whole plan and involved an unwitting accomplice doesn't surprise him in the least. He can't decide if knowing that makes him feel better or worse about the whole thing.

"I mean it," Tony insists, "don't. Because Theresa's not like me. She—with people like her, people like _you_ , it's—if you want to find the good in them, you don't have to look very far." He swirls his coffee around in his mug and takes a slow gulp. "That's why things never worked out between me and her. We were together," he explains, "nine or ten years ago. But she was so _nice_ , all give and no take, refused to ever hit me or cut me. We decided being just friends was better for both of us, since she couldn't hurt me the way I wanted her to."

It's starting to make sense to Steve now. "The way _I_ hurt you," he says flatly.

"Yes!" Tony replies. "See, we're speaking the same language now."

Steve stands his ground. "Listen, Tony, I'm okay with hurting you if that's what you really want. But I'm not okay with you hurting me."

"What? I never hit you," Tony protests, "and you have your healing factor anyway, so."

" _Tony_ ," Steve warns, because the man knows damn well what he's talking about.

"All right, all right. But the thing is..." Tony trails off, leaving only the sound of crunching and chewing to fill the cavernous kitchen. "You have super strength," he says after a second.

"So?"

"So," continues Tony, "do you ever injure people or break stuff without meaning to?"

What kind of question is that? Of course he does. Steve remembers countless doors that weren't as steady as they looked; the time he almost broke Morita's arm helping to haul him up into a tank; the first and last time he ever sparred with Bucky, after the serum. "Sometimes."

"Me too," Tony says. "I mean, not the way you do, obviously. But words are weapons too. I've been counting on mine since I learned to talk, way before I started building missiles for real. Words are weapons," he repeats, cramming the last of the Pop-Tarts into his mouth, "and when you're on your own, and everyone around you looks like an enemy—"

"You have to strike first," Steve finishes for him. His own voice sounds so hollow inside his head.

"Exactly."

"I'm not your enemy, Tony. You have to stop pointing those weapons at me."

"I know," says Tony quietly, "I know. And I'll try."

It's a promise Steve will hold him to. And he believes, he has to _choose_ to believe that a promise from Tony Stark means something, because he's not just a man in a suit; he reshapes reality. That's his superpower. Truth bends and dips around him like waves around a whirlpool, but Steve's swimming with his eyes open now.


	18. Chapter 18

They're naked in the rooftop garden under the rising sun, high above the screech and clang of the city coming to life. Steve's eyes roll back in his head as he gasps for air, a frenzy of light dancing at the edge of his vision like the afterimage of a repulsor beam. He slams into Tony, strikes him with a brutality he never knew he was capable of. He's pretty sure he's cracked a few ribs, but Tony, cross-eyed with ecstasy, begs him not to stop.

Doesn't he understand, he isn't ironclad like this? So many bodies Tony has, and this is the only one Steve could snap like a twig, this is the one he chooses to give him. He shouts encouragement and babbles and moans at the top of his lungs as Steve roams across his skin, and his raised knots of skin-but-not-skin, touching and stroking and biting and gashing.

It feels so right. It feels infinitely better than anything they've ever done before. Everything is stars exploding behind Steve's eyes, stripes pulsing angry and red up and down Tony's thighs. The world fades, narrowing and narrowing; in this moment it could almost be just the two of them here, Arctic ice and blazing plasma, melting away into nothing.


End file.
